Building From Your Design: Your Success Codes Are Already Written [Episode 1 of 4]

Intro/Outro: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a Sought after Entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast, and here's your host, Kathryn Thompson. 

Kathryn Thompson: Hey. Hey, super stoked that you're tuning this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive in today's [00:01:00] topic because what I'm gonna be doing over the next couple weeks is these micro episodes that are gonna walk you through the process.

System process that I would take if I was evolving my business, meaning maybe my offers aren't in alignment anymore. Maybe I'm shifting who I wanna serve. Maybe I am, you know, gut certified in something and want to integrate that into my business. Maybe my own process has evolved based on my own wisdom and mastery over years of doing it.

But I'm in sort of that evolution or pivot phase of my business. And or I'm starting a new idea or something totally different from scratch. Now I don't actually believe that we start from scratch, and I'll dive into that over these micro series that I want to create here for you, but. You were maybe leaving a corporate job and stepping into your online business.

Maybe you're coming from the offline world [00:02:00] into the online world and you feel like you're starting in this new area from scratch, or you've got this like really cool idea that you're wanting to bring to market. And you're trying to figure out how to do that in a way that's in alignment. Now, if you're in my world, you've probably been attracted to what I say and what I do, because I am all about ditching the cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to marketing and sales and business and life.

And so this process that I'm gonna walk you through is a very different process. That I would take now that I didn't take when I sold my brick and mortar business back in 2020 and stepped into the online world. So. I want to dive in. These episodes are gonna be very, very different compared to the episodes you're probably used to, which are more in depth, deep conversation, and they run like 40 minutes, sometimes an hour.

These are gonna be [00:03:00] micro episodes that are gonna be more workshop. Designed so that you can walk away after each episode and go and do something that I'm recommending that you do. Based on this process that I've now created that's helped me in my own pivots and my own evolution over the last year and a half, and by the end of these episodes over the next couple weeks, I'm hoping that you walk away with.

Some insight and some direction and some clarity in order to lay the foundation for these pivots and lay the foundation for these new offerings or this new direction or whatever it is that you're taking, bringing this new idea to life that you have that foundation. And I can't stress this enough because.

If you've been in my world for a while, you've probably heard some of the insights that I've shared where I feel like the world is going, where the industry's going, particularly personal brands, and what is really shifting and what [00:04:00] is gonna really shift even more in 20 26, 20 27 and beyond. And I get a lot of those insights just from my own being in the industry.

So, and seeing what people are no longer really jiving with. And the big shift that I see is around personal brands or the guru culture, thought leadership. I feel like that is going to crumble over the next couple years, and that is. As a result, I think of ai. I think AI has come in now, and I think a lot of what can be created from the thinking brain, the thought leadership, quite literally, people can start to do that very quickly using AI and turning that content out.

So the idea of thought leadership, the idea of gurus and the idea of personified personal brands, brands that are created based on a persona. That we know will [00:05:00] work to attract people into our worlds. Most personal brands are developed like that, where there's this persona of a person, and it's not manipulative, but it can come across that way.

But it's very manufactured, right? Credibility's manufactured brand personas manufactured. It's all manufactured too. Garner attention and capture people's attention. That is all shifting, in my opinion. And so what is going to start to really emerge, especially in the face of ai? What's real, what isn't real?

What is truly created by human and what isn't? And I'm not saying not to use ai, that's not what I'm saying. I think AI is a beautiful tool and accelerant, but what is going to emerge is going to be taste. People's actual genuine artistic taste and preference. Authenticity, right? Like are you actually truly like grounded in that message that you're sharing?

[00:06:00] Mastery, right? Wisdom and mastery, which is. Quite different than thought leadership. Thought leadership is something that's easy to think and speak, but a lot of thought leaders, and I've been in the industry for 25 years working alongside CEOs and VPs and directors and founders, and I've run my own companies and I've sold a company and I've built team.

What I will tell you, and I've seen this pattern is that most people aren't a hundred percent walking their talk. And so we're looking for embodied leadership, which is outside of the mind. It is actually integrated leadership and embodiment. And that wisdom isn't something that you can create through your thinking mind.

Let's just say it's something that's integrated. You're walking your talk, you're, you're delivering on what you say you can kind of deliver and. This is gonna become more and more important, and so the process that I'm walking you through over the next couple weeks is really, really important. If you want to create [00:07:00] something meaningful, something authentic, something that is truly a reflection of who you are and what you believe and what you stand for, and alignment is really important to you.

But if you're somebody who is looking for a quick fix. Fast action. Just give me the answers. Catherine. These next episodes are not going to be for you, and I'm gonna be really honest about that because I'm breaking this down over the weeks so that you have the time and the space to really do the work that I'm asking you to do.

And that is depth work, right? That is really depth work. Most of us want to outsource. Most of us do wanna outsource our authority and all of that to the gurus, to the thought leaders, tell me what I should do, tell me how I should build my business. And this process is not that. This process is going to give you [00:08:00] insight into who you are, how you're wired.

Why you've been successful up until this point in your life. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, but I haven't. I'm struggling, I'm grinding. I'm gonna call BS on that because I can almost guarantee you that you've created success in some way, shape, or form in your life over the decades that you've been living And.

I'm going to show you how to tune into yourself to discover that for yourself, and I'm also gonna help you unpack why we block ourselves from trusting that. And not believing that we can actually create a business and a life that really is genuinely, truly aligned with who we are and that we don't need to sacrifice who we are in order to be successful.

That is how personal brands are currently built. Most personal brands. People are sacrificing parts of who they are in order to be successful. You can ask any [00:09:00] founder, I can almost guarantee any founder will have something that they wish they didn't have to do in order to be successful, and then interview those same founders and they're going to tell you they're terrified to let go of what that is because they've created success.

They've built success on it. There's nothing worse, in my opinion, than building a business and success on a foundation that isn't in alignment with who you are and. Then trying to unravel that and I've done it and I've been there and I'm speaking from experience, not from some prediction or assumption that it's difficult.

I've done it multiple times now where I've built things on a foundation that weren't truly in alignment with me and where I outsourced my own inner knowing in order to adopt something in my business that went against. The natural way of [00:10:00] me being, and if you study human design, you know RA's whole thing about deconditioning, this is kind of what this is.

We all have our own conditioning, we all have our own stories. We are all wired in a certain way, and it's often written. In our NA blueprint in some way, shape or form, whether you believe in human design or astrology or gene keys. I've studied all three systems over the last five years, and it's. It doesn't really surprise me anymore how accurate it can be in so many ways.

But I'm not gonna go into Hu Human Design or astrology or jean keys through this series. What I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through a process that you don't actually need those systems yet if you don't want to. So that's the beautiful thing. So these episodes are gonna be micro, and what I want you to do today is, is I want you to, after you've listened to this, I want you [00:11:00] to grab a journal.

Pen, paper notes on your phone, voice recorder, whatever you need in order to document what I'm asking you to do here. And again, like I said, if you're looking for the answers. Catherine, just tell me what I need to do. Just tell me the answers, what I should do in order to grow my business or launch my idea.

Then this series is not gonna be for you because this series is going to move you in a very introspective, contemplative way. It's gonna move you slowly to discovering the foundation that you are going to need to lay for yourself as I record this. I don't know you, I don't know your situation. I don't know.

Your upbringing. I don't know your circumstances. I don't know any of that. And so if I'm sitting here prescribing to you what you should do, that's inherently why the guru and the [00:12:00] opinion and the advice based world that we live in is leading most people astray. Because I don't know you. It's like me giving you medical advice when I have no idea.

What your scenario is, it's like me telling you how to lose weight when I don't know your body composition and I don't know what you might struggle with emotionally. Like I don't, I can't give you that and nobody can, and that's the thing we have to stop buying into. So if you're wanting that. Then there's another guru out there that will gladly give you advice and expertise on your marketing and sales and business and all of that.

I'm not that guru. So the first thing that I want you to do is I want you to get a journal. Piece of paper, pen, whatever it is, voice notes. I'm somebody who loves to voice note and verbalize things. I'm also somebody who loves to verbalize it using this really cool tool that I've added to my computer called Whisper Flow.

I can link the link up in the show notes so that you can [00:13:00] access it if you want to, but basically you install it on your computer and you can literally just hold down a key on your computer and voice record your thoughts and ideas, right? So. If you want to use chat GBT or you want to use code and you want to document in that, you absolutely can as well.

But I used whisper flow basically to write emails now as I'm talking it through and to write notes on my computer. So I'm not somebody who's like naturally typing. I like to vocalize it. I have a defined throat. Again, I don't wanna get too much into. Jean Key's, human design, but you will know if you like to talk.

Versus write, if you like, writing long form content instead of short form content like you will naturally know. And this is what this process is gonna help you do. It's gonna help you get really clear on the foundation that you need to lay if you want to truly [00:14:00] create a business from alignment and also what your natural expression is.

You know who your natural clientele are. Um. What offers to create, where to create those offers. We're gonna walk through all of that, and this is the process I'm gonna lay out in these short blurbs of episodes now. So for today, step number one, what I want you to do is write down, voice out, you name it.

All of the ways that you have created success in your life to date. I'm not talking about your current scenario or your current situation, although that applies, but I don't want you to limit yourself to. The only way that you've created success may be in your online business or the only way that you've created success may be in your e-commerce or your product based business.

Not that I want that, but I also want all of the other ways that you've created success. This is really important, specifically if you're [00:15:00] pivoting, but also if you're starting quote unquote something from scratch, because it's gonna give you the gateway or the doorway into how you create success. And what that looks like for you, because this is part of the problem, right?

If I sell you on my success blueprint and I say, this is what you need to do in order to be successful. And you buy into my, my advice, because I'm an authority. I've done marketing, I've done sales. I know what I'm talking about. Then you go to try to implement it, and you've built a foundation on my success and how I create success.

For example, I just had a client recently who tell me, I just don't feel aligned with creating funnels. Like I just don't, and I feel like I have to to be successful, but the idea of creating a funnel and having. Building an email list and a massive email list just does not jive with me. And we went through a similar exercise and this is what we're gonna go through.

And basically what we uncovered was she [00:16:00] quite literally is not wired. Like she's not designed to create funnels and to be, you know, trying to cast this wide net in a massive peel, to bring in a bunch of strangers and. What's beautiful about human design and what's beautiful about astrology and what's beautiful about Gene Keys is, is that when you go through this process that I'm walking you through, then.

That just reaffirms it. Rather than seeking human design and seeking astrology and seeking gene keys or numerology or whatever system that you're doing, seeking that for the answers. 'cause what I find is when we share with people what their chart displays or whatever, if they don't believe it. And if there's limiting things in the way blocking them, then it's harder for them to buy into that, right?

And so they can go, well, that resonates, and I feel good about that. But now how do I actually do this? Well, today we're gonna talk [00:17:00] about what your key success factors are, or your codes, or whatever you want to call them. But basically I want you to. Write down all the ways you've been successful, all the way back to the time that you remember.

So this could be if you grew up playing sports or you were a musician and you did piano or singing, like what enabled you to be successful at piano? What enabled you to be successful as an artist, as a writer? What enables you to be successful in school? What enables you to be successful playing sports?

I want you to write down all of those success factors, and I want you to adopt the artist's way sort of process here, which is basically, I want you to spend 10 minutes free writing this, and if you get stuck where you're like, I, there's nothing else. There's nothing else. Sit with that. Sit with that stuckness.

Like is that actually true? Because I think the more we allow this to sort of free flow, [00:18:00] which is why I love voice notes, because once I start to go, I just, it just flows. And I'm not self editing and my brain isn't really rambling when I'm talking. My brain can't chatter. Right? The same way that it chatters when I'm writing.

Because when I'm writing, I'm just writing. I'm, I am moving my fingers obviously and writing, but my brain is a lot louder when I am in that sort of process and in that form of expression. But when I'm speaking, because I'm listening to myself while I speak, the brain doesn't allow me to rattle off all the doubts and fears, and so I can just freely channel.

And for many of you channeling that is gonna come very easily through spoken word. Now, I want you to write all of those down. And then I want you to take a moment and just sit with those, so as you write them down or as you vocalize them, if you vocalize them, I'd love for you to transcribe them. So that you can actually visually see it, right?

Sometimes when we're channeling we don't remember what we said or how we [00:19:00] set it. So I want you to take that voice note and I want you to convert it into something written and or get whisper flow and just hold the button down and just talk to the thing and it'll naturally transcribe for you. So you can do it in a Google Doc, you can do it in an email, you can do it in your notes, on your, um, computer, whatever it is.

I'll link up whisper flow. Link here so you can access that. But I want you to get it in, uh, so that you can actually read it and I want you to go back and read it. And I want you to do that three times. And I know that's gonna sound maybe crazy or like why three, but I want you to really read it and I want you to really digest what you've said or what you've written.

And then I want you to sit with it for a minute and pause. And I want you to watch what happens in the pause. I want you to watch what happens in the exercise, or is your mind saying, this is silly, this is dumb. This is a waste of time. Like I've done these exercises before. I want you to watch what your [00:20:00] brain says, and I want you to document that.

I want you to document all the things your brain is saying, and then once you've done that, I want you to take another 10 minutes. I know this seems crazy, like I can't write for 10 minutes or I can't talk for 10 minutes. Trust me, you can. Trust me, you can. I want you to take another 10 minutes, which is 20 minutes in total, basically maybe 25 minutes for the exercise.

It's not, I'm not asking you, you know, to spend a whole day doing this. It's 25 minutes. We all have 25 minutes, and trust me, it's gonna save you a shit ton of time down the line when you build the foundation on something that isn't in alignment. Trust me, resources, time, all of it. Is gonna save you so much time.

And this is the work that most people don't wanna do. 'cause they feel like it's a waste of time. I'll just go get the shortcut from somebody else. The problem is their shortcut isn't yours. And what you do is you spend, and you've probably been in that, you've probably experienced success built on the foundation that isn't yours.

[00:21:00] So I want you to now write down, based on all of these success tidbits that you've written, I want you to express. Why this isn't possible in your pivot and why this isn't possible and or why this isn't possible if you're starting from scratch. For example, if you're coming in the offline world to the online world, you might say, I don't have a community online.

I'm, I'm really good at making community in person, but I cannot do that in the online space. Or you might say, well, what? I'm leaving in the offline world. I'm ditching corporate and I'm coming online, so I have to rebuild community 'cause the people in my corporate job are not going to be aligned for this new offer.

So that form of success, the way I networked, or the way I formed relationships in corporate doesn't matter anymore. I want you to watch and write all of the reasons why [00:22:00] all these forms of success that you've created and the way in which you've created it are not possible in this new direction. Maybe you're certified in something new.

I was just recently certified in astrophotography, relocation, astrology, and I'm, I'm sitting with this. Right now going, how do I integrate that with marketing and sales and business? I've been known as a marketer and a conversion copywriter. How do I now transition and evolve? Right? I might, my brain might go, it's not possible.

You either have to be an astrologer or you have to be a marketer. You can't be both. Or the people that you've built an audience with are not gonna resonate with the the astro photography piece. So you need to create a whole new persona and business and whatever, right? That those are the limiting beliefs that I want you to write down all of the ways in which you are actually stopping yourself from using your success.

And I'm gonna give you an example of my own [00:23:00] experience. When I left my brick and mortar, sold the brick and mortar. All of the ways that I had created success up until that point in my life in corporate, even in my online or in my brick and mortar, I literally walked through this vortex in the online space, and I talk about this a lot in my episodes where it was like I felt like I was starting from scratch, and therefore I didn't feel like anything that I was bringing to the table.

In terms of creating success was transferable because everything I was doing in the online world was different. The people I was serving was different, the market was different, the tools were different, right? With my brick and mortar, a lot of what we did was word of mouth referral and it was community and I just, I focused on creating an experience for people in my brick and mortar, which kept them coming back, but also kept them referring me if I could go back.

Start my online business again. That's exactly how I would build [00:24:00] it. But I'm gonna preface, this is really important. If you are operating from a place of survival, escapism, I need to, I need to sell the business and start a new one. If you are operating from a place of survival, I don't have enough money, then what I'm asking you to do is I'm asking you to create the foundation where you feel like you have your basic needs met.

You have the money. And if that means taking a job or work that isn't in alignment with this new direction, I recommend that because here's what I am fed up with, I think in the online space, but just in general is spiritual bypassing, right? So I can just sit and only take aligned action. I only need to take aligned line action, never manifest the things that I want.

And so I'm not doing any of that. That's spiritual bypassing. Because the reality of our modern world is you need money to live, and if you don't have money to live [00:25:00] or you don't have enough money to cover your basic needs, or you don't have enough money where you feel safe, everyone's threshold's gonna be different.

You will naturally build a business on a misaligned foundation. When I left corporate, I was trying to escape corporate, so I jumped into a brick and mortar that wasn't in alignment. So I'm, I'm speaking from full experience and those four years were very difficult. So many lessons, but very difficult.

Then I wanted to escape the brick and mortar, so I jumped into the online space and I was desperate to make it work, and so I was willing to outsource all of my insight and all of my years of experience and all of my ability in creating success to everybody else around me. Tell me what I need to do. I don't know.

I don't know what I need to do. I don't know. I don't know. That was my limiting beliefs coming up in every way, shape, or form. I don't know how to create an experience online. I don't know how to, [00:26:00] um, build community. I feel like I'm just talking and speaking into the void. And the reality of that is, is that then I, then I bought into all of these other ways of building a business that never really worked anyways.

Either in bringing in sales. So there was this desperate feeling though, that I needed to make money in order to survive and feel safe. And so I sacrificed my alignment for financial security. And so what I'm asking you is if, if you're in that state rate, now you need to create financial security at the base.

And that means this process might be slower. But again, that's the mistake when we live in this hyper obsessed, speed obsessed world. Is that we want things to happen quick. We aren't patient with our timing, and I'm telling you this from experience, you are going to spin for years in that if you're constantly chasing the business that you want, but you're sacrificing [00:27:00] for financial security.

In that build, right? You're gonna, you're gonna apply someone else's success. You're going to apply someone else's strategies. You're going to build based on that, and you're gonna get to a point potentially where you've created success, but it's still not in alignment. And again, there's nothing worse than being in that.

There's nothing worse than being in that and having the success and then going, oh shit. Now I have to make the decision to cut something or let something go that's successful. That's a hard place to be. And I, I was there a year and a half ago. I was there a year and a half ago when I was like, the funnel that I built, the ads, they just, there was a lot of effort, expenditure, but also financial expenditure to create the success.

And so it felt really heavy to me. So I made the decision to turn my ads off. The funnel, that was my primary source of income. I decided to turn my ads off [00:28:00] and I haven't run ads in almost a year. Now, some of you might not know that, but I have not run Facebook ads or meta ads in almost a year, and it was because it wasn't in alignment with what it was that I actually wanted to build within my business and also feel in my business.

The way in which I want it to feel. And that's a hard decision to make because it's your primary source. And so I don't advise that. I don't. Right. I advise laying the foundation now, and so I want you to, like I said, write out all of your keys of success, and then I want you to write out all of the reasons why you don't think that now applies to this new direction that you're taking.

And then I want you to sit with that. And next week what we're going to talk about is all of the ways in which you can, we need to overcome those limiting beliefs. Right? So again, a big [00:29:00] part of this, and I'm sure you're sitting here going, just tell me how it's great to have the insight and awareness, but then how, and we're gonna do that, but next week what I want to dive into is how to shed release all of those limiting thoughts, because if you don't.

If they're only gonna get in the way, you're gonna start to build an alignment and then something flashy pops up, or you click on an ad or you hear another perspective and you're like, oh shit. And you don't trust yourself. If you don't trust yourself, you'll always outsource. And so this is part of this is building the trust muscle, right?

Building that trust muscle. And that's what we're gonna work on next week, is to build that trust muscle so that you can truly build that foundation. So I hope this episode has been helpful and I cannot wait to hear what you guys are navigating. Please DM me with any questions or email me. I'm always here.

I would love to hear how you've built success. [00:30:00] And why you feel like. That success is not a gateway to building something new and why it's not possible to use the skills and use the ways in which you've been successful, whether at word of mouth or, well, I'm going online now, it's not local. I only work locally and community wise now.

And now I wanna reach more people. How do I do that? Like anything that's coming up, I would love to hear it. So with that, I hope you have a five day. Cheers. 

Intro/Outro: Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com.

Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.